The OECD has released its end-2005 broadband statistics for 30 OECD member countries. According to the OECD, main highlights from the second half of 2005 are:

In December 2005, four countries (Iceland, Korea, the Netherlands and Denmark) led the OECD in broadband penetration, each with more than 25 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

Iceland now leads the OECD with a broadband penetration rate of 26.7 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

Korea’s broadband market is advancing to the next stage of development where existing subscribers switch platforms for increased bandwidth. In Korea, fibre-based broadband connections grew 52.4% during 2005. This switchover effect is evident by the net loss of DSL (-3.3%) and cable (-1.7%) subscribers during the year.

The strongest per-capita subscriber growth came from Iceland, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Australia. Each country added more than 6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants during 2005.

Japan leads the OECD in fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) with 4.6 million fibre subscribers at the end of 2005. Fibre subscribers alone in Japan outnumber total broadband subscribers in 21 of the 30 OECD countries.

DSL is still the leading platform in 28 OECD countries. Cable subscribers outnumber DSL in Canada and the United States.

The United States has the largest total number of broadband subscribers in the OECD at 49 million. US broadband subscribers represent 31% of all broadband connections in the OECD.

Canada leads the G7 group of industrialized countries in broadband penetration

Looking back, 2005 saw a rise in profit-driven attacks. These were reflected by phishing, which now represents as much as one percent of the global e-mail traffic and is far more effective than spamming.

Viruses, worms, and malicious software are becoming part and parcel of information and communications technology. According to Trend Micro's report, called Virus and Spam Roundup 2005 and Predictions for 2006, this year will see more spy phishing and spear phishing on the Internet.

Though the United States is making progress in the war on unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, it still generates more than any other nation in the world, according to recent statistics from Sophos, a provider of anti-malware solutions.

Sophos ranked spam outputs of the top 12 countries and top six continents based on messages it received in its “global network of spam traps” between January and March, according to the group’s release.

For decades our understanding of economic production has been that individuals order their productive activities in one of two ways: either as employees in firms, following the directions of managers, or as individuals in markets, following price signals. This dichotomy was first identified in the early work of Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, and was developed most explicitly in the work of neo-institutional economist Oliver Williamson. In the past three or four years, public attention has focused on a fifteen-year-old social-economic phenomenon in the software development world. This phenomenon, called free software or open source software, involves thousands or even tens of thousands of programmers contributing to large and small scale project, where the central organizing principle is that the software remains free of most constraints on copying and use common to proprietary materials. No one "owns" the software in the traditional sense of being able to command how it is used or developed, or to control its disposition. The result is the emergence of a vibrant, innovative and productive collaboration, whose participants are not organized in firms and do not choose their projects in response to price signals.

In this paper I explain that while free software is highly visible, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode "commons-based peer-production," to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.

The paper also explains why this mode has systematic advantages over markets and managerial hierarchies when the object of production is information or culture, and where the capital investment necessary for production-computers and communications capabilities-is widely distributed instead of concentrated. In particular, this mode of production is better than firms and markets for two reasons. First, it is better at identifying and assigning human capital to information and cultural production processes. In this regard, peer-production has an advantage in what I call "information opportunity cost." That is, it loses less information about who the best person for a given job might be than do either of the other two organizational modes. Second, there are substantial increasing returns to allow very larger clusters of potential contributors to interact with very large clusters of information resources in search of new projects and collaboration enterprises. Removing property and contract as the organizing principles of collaboration substantially reduces transaction costs involved in allowing these large clusters of potential contributors to review and select which resources to work on, for which projects, and with which collaborators. This results in allocation gains, that increase more than proportionately with the increase in the number of individuals and resources that are part of the system. The article concludes with an overview of how these models use a variety of technological and social strategies to overcome the collective action problems usually solved in managerial and market-based systems by property and contract.

The National Communications Authority of Hungary (NCAH) started last summer the elaboration of a regulatory strategy for the period 2006 to 2010. In this process a detailed breakdown is given of the means by which NCAH intends to promote the development of electronic communications markets which play an increasingly important role in the Hungarian economy contributing to the creation of the information society and consequent improvement of the country’s competitiveness.

The Telecommunications Policy Review Panel was established by the Minister of Industry on April 11, 2005, to conduct a review of Canada's telecommunications framework. The Panel was asked in particular to recommend on:

1. how to implement an efficient, fair, functional and forward-looking regulatory framework that serves Canadian consumers and businesses, and that can adapt to a changing technological landscape, 2. mechanisms to ensure that all Canadians continue to have an appropriate level of access to modern telecommunications services, 3. measures to promote the development, adoption and expanded use of advanced telecommunications services across the economy.

The Panel's reviewed Canada's telecommunications policy and regulatory framework and made recommendations on how to make it a model of 21st century regulation.

The Final Report of the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel 2006 is available here.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) joined 29 other countries in calling for increased cooperation between nations in combating spam. The FTC signed off on a set of anti-spam recommendations by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a coalition of 30 countries organized to promote economic growth and trade.

More information about OECD activities on countering spam can be found here.

"The first (2002) edition of the CIIP Handbook contained an inventory of protection policies in eight countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States) and their methods employed for CII assessment. The second edition (2004) included an update of existing surveys and covered six additional countries (Austria, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and New Zealand) as well as international protection efforts."

"The latest version continues the tradition of the past two editions, while its scope has been extended: not only has the country survey section been further expanded with a specific focus on Asia by including India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Russia, but it is also accompanied by a second volume with in-depth analysis of key issues related to CIIP."

"This report sets out a framework for multi-agency coordination of Federal R&D investments in technologies that can better secure the interconnected computing systems, networks, and information that together make up the U.S. information technology (IT) infrastructure."

"This country’s IT infrastructure – which includes not only the public Internet but also the networking and IT systems that control critical infrastructures ranging from power grids to emergency communications systems – is vital not only to our national and homeland security but to our economic security," said John H. Marburger III, Science Adviser to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). "This report provides a blueprint for coordination of Federal R&D across agencies that will maximize the impact of investments in this key area of the national interest."

The announcement, while acknowledging that standards work is ongoing
in many different places, including ITU, is a reaction to an industry
call for ITU to push forward and coordinate global standardization
effort in the field.

IPTV is a system
where a digital television service is delivered to consumers using the
Internet protocol over a broadband connection. It will help pave the
way for players, many of whom are already moving to IP-based NGN
infrastructure, to offer a triple-play of video, voice and data.

Standards are necessary in order to give service providers, whether
traditional broadcasters, ISPs or telecoms service providers, control
over their platforms and their offerings. Standards here will encourage
innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee QoS, ensure
interoperability and ultimately help players remain competitive.

The mission of IPTV FG
is to coordinate and promote the development of global IPTV standards
taking into account the existing work of the ITU study groups as well
as SDOs, fora and consortia. The group was launched following a
decision taken at a public consultation meeting attended by around 120
experts from the world’s ICT companies. Attendees agreed that all
players in the IPTV value chain will benefit from worldwide standards,
that there is a lot of work to be done and that rapid progress is
necessary in order to avoid market fragmentation. The Focus Group
mechanism was seen as the most effective way of addressing this. Inputs
to the meeting as well as a webcast can be found here.

Houlin Zhao, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau of ITU: "We
have seen a desire to expedite and accelerate a global focus on
standards for IPTV. There has been extraordinary consensus that ITU
must lead this work and I am pleased that – again - ITU is seen as the
right place to develop and harmonize this international standardization
work, as well as identify and help fill gaps where there is still a
standardization need." The FG will build upon existing work. Its
scope will include architecture and requirements, QoS, security,
network and control aspects, end system aspects – terminals etc.,
interoperability, middleware and application platforms.

China’s Ministry of Information Industry has adopted the Measures for the Administration of Internet E-mails. The regulations, which took effect from 30 March 2006, are designed to apply to email service providers and apply to any person operating an email service for Internet users in Mainland China.

The regulations are as follows:

A provider is defined as any person in the service supply chain involved in delivering or helping users to receive email;

Service providers must register with the government and obtain a license before providing email services;

Violators face warnings or penalties of up to 30,000 yuan (approx. $3,700 US) and risk losing their license;

Firms are barred from sending unsolicited commercial messages without prior consent from recipients;

All commercial email must have a subject header of “AD” or the Chinese character for advertisement;

The rules only apply to email containing commercial advertisements;

The rules state that providers must stop delivery of any messages containing commercial advertisements even if a recipient first consents, but later changes his or her mind.

The IEEE 802.11 Working Group has passed a major milestone in the development of IEEE 802.11s(TM), "Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications: Extended Service Set Mesh Networking", by voting to confirm a single proposal as the initial basis for the IEEE 802.11s standard. Many additional steps, which will include technical changes, are necessary before this standard becomes final; but this vote sets the baseline from which the group will work. Once completed, IEEE 802.11s will provide an interoperable and secure wireless distribution system between IEEE 802.11(TM) mesh points. This can reduce backhaul and installation costs. It also will extend mobility to access points in IEEE wireless local area networks (WLANs), enabling a new class of IEEE 802.11 applications that require untethered infrastructure.

The Federal Trade Commission and members of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) are meeting in Jeju, Korea, on March 26-28, to discuss the progress of international efforts to combat cross-border fraud and explore new international initiatives to protect consumers around the world.

The FTC’s participation in ICPEN is one part of the agency’s ongoing effort to combat a rising number of cross-border fraud complaints from American consumers. ICPEN members discussed the results of a recent Internet surf for Web sites that are “hidden traps online.”

Over 30 countries participated in the international surf. In the United States, the focus was on Web sites with fraudulent claims advertising “miracle cures” for diabetes, with the FTC, FDA, and several states Attorneys General offices participating.

The FTC and its partners reviewed over 1,000 Web sites and identified over 150 with potentially misleading diabetes claims. The FTC will follow-up, sending warning letters to Web sites that appear to have deceptive or false claims.

"The European Commission launched a new website which aims to help consumers get a better deal when using their mobile phones abroad. For this purpose, the website makes public roaming tariffs from the operators in all 25 EU Member States. The launch of this site was signalled in July when Commissioner Viviane Reding highlighted the high cost of using mobile phones abroad and the need to ensure greater transparency of these charges. By means of tables of sample tariffs and direct links to EU mobile operators, the website intends to give EU consumers a concrete idea of the level of tariffs they are likely to face when going on holiday as well as guidance and tips on how to manage their international roaming bills. Since the announcement of the website before this summer, there are signs that competition is starting to develop, in particular with some operators offering special holiday and other tariff packages."

The Convention is the only binding international instrument dealing with cybercrime. It has received widespread international support and is open to all States.

The Convention provides for consultations of the Parties (the Convention Committee on Cybercrime (T-CY)). The first meeting of the consultation of the parties took place in Strasbourg, France from 21-22 March 2006. Documents and materials from the meeting are available on the T-CY website.

The fight against spam, phishing and e-mail fraud should focus on economic incentives and aiding law enforcement, according to attendees at a conference examining the problem this week. Speakers at MIT's 2006 Spam Conference were notably cognizant of the recent proposals of white lists and AOL's Goodmail, a pay per e-mail service offering preferential treatment in e-mail delivery for marketers.

World Telecommunication Day (WTD) commemorates the founding of ITU on 17 May 1865. This year, WTD could carry added significance as 17 May has been identified by the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society as “World Information Society Day”.

While World Information Society Day is yet to be proclaimed, ITU, as the leading ICT agency of the UN system, upholds the idea and looks forward to its members to raise awareness of the role of ICT in achieving the development goals of all people.

For WTD 2006, the ITU Council chose the theme of Promoting Global Cybersecurity to highlight the serious challenges we face in ensuring the safety and security of networked information and communication systems.

In today’s interconnected and increasingly networked world, societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure and in order to instill confidence in online trade, commerce, banking, telemedicine, e-government and a host of other applications, we need to strengthen the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, and develop a global culture of cybersecurity.

The urgency of promoting cybersecurity has been called for by the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 2002, the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-2004) as well as the United Nations General Assembly (resolutions 58/199, 2004, and 57/239, 2002).

Invitations to organize national programmes in the context of promoting the theme Promoting Global Cybersecurity for WTD 2006 were sent to all ITU Member States and ITU Sector Members. Sector Members represent over 647 public and private companies and organizations with an interest in telecommunications. Also in conjunction with WTD 2006, the ITU is conducting a survey of cybersecurity trust and awareness. A list of links to the related materials includes:

Internet service providers could face huge fines if they do not provide spam filtering or impose email sending limits under new rules set down by a communications watchdog. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) today registered the world's first legislative code of practice for internet and email service providers.

Web users are getting spoiled. Once they experience the Ajax-powered speed and interactivity of apps on Google or Flickr, click-and-wait Web interfaces won't cut it. Spurred by growing business interest, Microsoft and backers of Eclipse, the open source programmer's workbench, last week stepped up efforts to create Ajax-friendly tools for building interactive Web applications.

"For years, France's telecommunications industry was a state-owned monopoly with one of the world's most backward broadband markets. But thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S.

One telecom company in particular has exploited the changes and created competition in France -- a start-up called Iliad. Over 1.1 million French subscribers pay as low as €29.99 ($36) monthly for a "triple play" package called Free that includes 81 TV channels, unlimited phone calls within France and to 14 countries, and high-speed Internet. The least expensive comparable package from most cable and phone operators in the U.S. is more than $90, although more TV channels are generally included.

"We are coming into people's living rooms and changing the way they consume telecom services," says Michael Boukobza, Iliad's 28-year-old chief executive."

Key to France's success has been the active intervention of ARCEP, the French communications regulator. At last week's ITU workshop What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?, François Varloot of ARCEP presentedan overview of the French marketplace and their views on emerging symmetric and asymmetric IP regulatory issues.

At a technology forum in Brussels hosted by EuroISPA - the European Internet Services Providers Association, and co-sponsored by Interpol, Neil Holloway, president, Microsoft (Europe, Middle East and Africa), inaugurated a global law enforcement campaign targeted at cybercriminals responsible for phishing attacks.

This is part of Microsoft's larger program dubbed - the Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative (GPEI), that aims at co-ordinating and expanding the company's anti-phishing efforts globally.

The Economist one said: "if the Net does have a God, he is probably Jon Postel." David Maher, Senior Vice President, Law and Policy at PIR has published his memoirs of the early day attempts to revamp the internet's domain name system, which he has entitled Reporting to God. Ten years later, it appears that decisions surrounding the DNS remain as equally controversial as in the mid-1990's.

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